Re: The Letter "K"

Quoting Akhilesh Pillalamarri <valardil@...>:

>
> It makes no sense the letter K is in the latin alphabet, if the original "C"
> in latin coveyed that sound. All the places i've searched said that "k" was
> used in greek words, but the romans didnt borrow "pi" to represent greek
> words tat could otherwise be spelled with "p." I suspect tat the "k" might
> have been pronounced [x]. Does anyone know the purpose of k?
There's no law of nature decreeing that letters have to have a sensible
purpose. 'K' simply was in the set of letters the Romans adopted from the
Etruscans, and they never came round to dropping it. It was used in a few
words like _kalendae_. Of course, many modern languages written in the Latin
alphabet retain letters they don't much use, f'rinstance 'z' in Swedish
and 'k' in Spanish.

Greek kappa seems to've been fairly consistently rendered as 'C', from what
I've seen.

                                                        Andreas

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